


Bradford and the Commander

by Nihilistic_Janitor



Category: XCOM (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, F/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 3,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24677314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nihilistic_Janitor/pseuds/Nihilistic_Janitor
Summary: A series of drabbles exploring John Bradford's relationship with Commander Janice Yoshimura.
Relationships: John "Central" Bradford/Commander (XCOM)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Me and skairunner cowrote these drabbles a long time ago, and since I'm airing out a bunch of things I've been meaning to post I decided to toss this up too.

Bradford steamed as he stomped around the facility.   
  
A joke. He'd been assigned to a fucking joke. Defending the earth against fucking aliens. Why the fuck was this a post that needed anyone, much less him?   
  
The unfairness of it grated against his skin. Ground against his teeth. Struck discordant notes against his head. One fuckup, one time pulling rank on a smartass who happened to be related to a higher-up, and now his career was canned before it started.   
  
At least XCOM's stupid facility had a decent gym. At least the people in it stayed out of his way. At least he'd have peace and quiet to slowly go insane in. Small mercies.

Time blurred as Bradford spent day after day in the damned facility, overseeing all the nothing that went on. Combing through reports of crop circles, of homemade radio telescopes finding messages, of people crying abduction. Every one felt like he was being ordered to chase his tail.

And then the first instance happened. A report that wasn’t just smoke and mirrors. A strange device in a crater in Lithuania. Not conclusively inhuman, but something suspicious.

It began to happen more and more; reports gaining credibility, and with them, XCOM gaining importance. Suddenly, he was getting resources sent his way, opportunities to advance glimmered on the horizon. He wasn’t sure if he was really willing to believe in the possibility that the aliens were real, but he was absolutely willing to take advantage of it to get out of the limbo he was currently trapped in.

It didn't work out that way, of course. No plan survives contact with the enemy.

New transfers were par for the course these days, but not a transfer of a commander. Someone ranked above him, to oversee XCOM’s operation. Someone to take advantage of the fucking benchwarming he’d been doing over the past few months.

He cast a glance at her, standing on the bridge. Her neat-pressed uniform, her straight brown hair cut sensibly short, her expression carefully neutral.

The Commander. He let it echo sarcastically in his mind, and if he was a grunt he might even let it echo sarcastically out loud, like some of the more brazen ones were already doing. When shit hit the fan, either she would flail and fail to deal with it, or she would force him to do it and take the credit. Neither possibility was one he was looking forward to.

Instead, he kept it all in his head. Shitlists were made to be stayed off of.

"Okay. Fill me in." The Commander didn't look at him as she spoke, instead staring up at the holomap. This, too, irritated him. Command had dropped a commander on top of him, transferred from who knows where, and she didn't even have the decency to read up before arrival? Or, apparently, look him in the eye.   
  
He tamped it down as best as he could, but some of the embers scattered out with his words. "Disappearances, ma'am. Crushed trees, sightings of unidentified craft flying noticeably fast..."

It was frustrating. She didn’t even appear to be listening, skimming over the holomap as she was. Instead, Bradford was just putting effort into throwing a report to the void. He couldn’t help but be reminded of old horror stories of commanders who would make their troops waste hours and hours on meaningless drivel like this. Moving lakes with eyedroppers, because it gave them a power trip.

"—fifty reports of—” The Commander suddenly gave him a look, and Bradford trailed off. "Ma'am."   
  
"What do  _ you _ think, Lieutenant?" Her voice was even, but it could be anything. A test, a trap, she was bored.   
  
"I believe that they may--"   
  
"No. I mean your thoughts, not the reports' thoughts."   
  
His career was dead-ended anyways. Was there much to lose? "Frankly, ma'am, I think it's a load of cow droppings. Civilians, blurry cameras, urban rumors." He hesitated "But we'll investigate it anyways."   
  
The Commander nodded slowly. "Let’s get to work, then." The op proceeded smoothly and swiftly. Not that he'd be willing to publicly rub it in the Commander's face, but he'd been right about the report being a waste of time.    
  
"You were right, Lieutenant," the Commander said, and for a second he was terrified he'd voiced his thoughts out loud. "Still, certainly worth investigating. Best to separate the wheat from the chaff now."   
  
Was that a dig at him? He couldn't tell. Her tone was level, but once again that didn't mean anything. Perhaps she was one of those commanders who liked to bully their subordinates in a way they couldn't even be sure they were suffering from.   
  
She nodded to the rest of the staff on the bridge. "I'll be in my office. Let me know if anything out of the ordinary occurs."   
  
As soon as she left, everyone let out a tense breath. Nothing more stressful than trying to gauge a new commander's mettle.


	2. Chapter 2

It had been an empty office, used as an impromptu storeroom when the old ones got crowded. That had been cleared out and new furniture installed in record time, at the Commander's behest.   
  
Bradford contemplated this as he stood in front of the door, getting ready to knock. Maybe they'd been so fast because she was a slave driver. She certainly seemed prim and proper enough to demand that kind of work ethic from her subordinates. It wouldn't be a problem for him, of course, but it wouldn't be fun.   
  
He knocked. Janice said, "Come in."   
  
She was seated at her desk, working away at a stack of paperwork. She didn't look up as she said, "What brings you here?"   
  
Bradford felt another angry twinge. She never seemed to deem him worth looking at when talking to him. He said, "We have another possible incident of alien activity, ma'am."   
  
The Commander stood. "Fill me in on the way to the bridge," she said. She had the courtesy to actually look at Bradford as she said it, and then she was off, striding down the hallway, Bradford being dragged along behind as he gave another boring and likely pointless report.   
  
When he finished, just outside the bridge, the Commander looked at him expectantly. Bradford, not being a mid-reader, elected to stand there until the Commander said, "And your thoughts, Lieutenant?"   
  
This again.

"Ma'am. This sighting was reported by a source much more credible than the usual farmer or civilian, but I still find it hard to believe there's anything there." The understatement of the year. Another one of the endless ghost stories XCOM was always tasked with tracking down.

The Commander nodded, and then ordered a landing team put together to investigate. Some of the new transfers in, along with one of the troopers that had been at XCOM all along. They shipped off, and everyone on the bridge settled in to wait.   
  
Bradford cast another wary glance at the Commander, who had gone to a seat overlooking the room. Ramrod straight, eyes roving, hands folded in front of her. That sort. Then her gaze swept in his direction, and he quickly snapped his gaze back to his monitor.   
  
He clearly hadn't been fast enough, because it wasn't but a moment before he heard the sharp clacking of the Commander's shoes on the floor behind him.

“Did you have something to say, Lieutenant?"

Fuck.

This was exactly the sort of thing that got him assigned to XCOM in the first place. Getting on the Commander’s bad side was not an option. No matter how he could already tell that working under her would torment him daily. He needed to keep his head down, stay focused, get out, and get back into a place with some real career options. 

“No ma’am.”

She nodded. He could hear the unspoken, “That's what I thought,” in it loud and clear. 

Luckily, that was enough to placate her, and she returned to her seat.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Starting here is where the XCOM 2 stuff and unrequited love comes in.

The Commander was human. She’d breathed and lived and trained like Bradford and all of his people did. She'd fought as hard as any of them, and then, in that old tradition of humans, eventually lost. He thought she died. He didn't believe that she did, though. And wasn't that more important?

The Commander looked like she hadn't aged a day, walking into the command center after the rescue, shrugging on authority like a well-worn jacket. "Welcome back, Commander," Bradford had said. "Janice."

She'd smiled at him, said a lot of things. "Thank you," and "I'm glad to be here," and "let's kick some alien butt"--in terms less suitable for polite company--and then she'd acted. Win after win, narrow tactical victories, calmly threading the needle between the rock and the sea-monster. In the operations theatre she was the obelisk, the implacable force that shattered the aliens' best efforts without so much a flinch. She was brilliant and, Bradford thought to himself in those brief moments between head hitting the bed and getting back up with the alarm, utterly out of his league.


	4. Chapter 4

I don't need a therapist, Bradford thought to himself sometimes. Alcohol worked just fine. He wasn't sure how much he was joking. It burned as it went down, and the door clicked open.

"Bradford?"

He choked, and started coughing, and everything in the world was wrong because the moonshine was going the wrong way, because the Commander was standing in the doorway to his office, and because she looked concerned for him. 

"It's eleven," she said, gently but chiding. 

"The saying," he managed through the pain. "It's five--"

"It's eleven right  _ here _ ."

"We're clear for at least thirteen hours," Bradford said, wiping off his mouth with his hand. At this moment, he felt like a stowaway that had been hiding in a corner of the ship--someone not quite allowed to be here but was anyways. Then anger rose belatedly. This was  _ his _ office. The  _ Commander _ was the one that was not quite allowed to be here. He opened his mouth, but she beat him to the punch.

"I'm sorry. It wasn't my place. Just, don't drink too much, okay?"

He found himself with a sudden lack of air.

"I care about you. I don't want you to hurt yourself. Drink in moderation and hydrate."

"Right," he said, the memory of alcohol burning in his throat, the bottle sloshing loudly half-empty. Traitor.

Her eyes wandered to the bottle. Traitor, he told the damn thing again. She smiled, and the door slid closed behind her. The bottle survived impact with the desk, but Bradford hadn't survived his own encounter with the Commander.


	5. Chapter 5

Bradford took the walk over to the barracks at a leisurely pace. A little routine bit of inspection, make sure everyone was doing alright, maintain some sense of normality in a world that had gone to hell twenty years ago. Besides, it gave him a chance to talk to some of the soldiers. Try to keep morale up. The Commander was better at the whole morale side of things, but that didn't mean he couldn't do his part.

Speak of the devil. He could hear the Commander's voice, coming from around the corner. Had she decided to do the inspection herself today? He hadn't gotten a memo.

He could always just ask.

He turned the corner, and his heart slammed in his chest, and he slammed the brakes on his body. There was the Commander, yes. Talking with one of the soldiers. Zoe. That was the soldier's name. But the Commander was leaned against the wall, relaxed, and Zoe was hovering close over her, and the Commander was wearing civvies, and so was Zoe.

"So, you come here often?" Zoe grinned at the Commander as she said it, and the Commander started to laugh, and then Zoe was laughing too and Bradford could feel a lance of something like anger in his chest. She had a duty! They had a duty. To spend her time fraternizing like this was... was...

Was human. Was only human. The anger burned out, and a desire to go drink installed itself in its place. He'd always known he hadn't had a chance. This just confirmed it. Painfully.

"That was the cheesiest--" he heard the Commander start to say as he walked off. The barracks could get inspected some other time.


	6. Chapter 6

Bradford put the controller down and put his head in his hands. The lounge was supposed to be relaxing, not get him riled up worse. The sound of Cuphead taunting him blared from the tv. It wasn't his fault he hadn't gotten a chance to play it since he was seventeen.

"Oh, cool. Cuphead?" The Commander. Of course right after his fifteenth death was when the Commander came in.

"Yeah," Bradford said, straightening up and trying to salvage some dignity.

"Mind if I give it a go?" the Commander asked.

Bradford passed her the controller. He just needed to calm down. Maybe watching the Commander play would help him spot a pattern. Or ease his nerves.

The Commander ducked, dodged, dashed, and shot, and came out the other end of the boss without a single scratch on Cuphead's porcelain frame. Bradford just stared. Of course the Commander would be good at video games, too. Of course.

"I haven't played this in way too long. Too many close calls in that fight," she said, a smile on her face, as she wandered around looking for another boss to fight.

Very quietly, Bradford said, "How are you so good?" He didn't mean for her to hear. He didn't even entirely mean it about the game. She heard anyway.

"I can show you. Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty simple. Just gotta get your timing down."

Bradford said, "Oh," and just listened to the Commander talk. Maybe she would help him get better. If anyone could teach him, she could.


	7. Chapter 7

Bradford paused in his speech, just for a moment. He thought about it. He stared across the bar at the Commander, whose expression he was too drunk to read.

"You fought an Avatar," the Commander said, one lip quirked up wryly.

Bradford blinked. Did he say they had fought an Avatar? How drunk was he?

Drunk enough to respond with a, "Yes," apparently.

"And you fought this Avatar with conventional weapons," she said.

Bradford felt his next words die on his tongue. He could feel his own stupidity closing in on him like a vice. His hopes of impressing her began to crumble before his eyes. He opened his mouth, and then closed it, and then opened it again and filled it with beer. He had another idea, and rather than learn from his mistakes he pressed forward, trying to salvage the conversation.

"Well, no. We had, uh, prototypes."

"Prototypes," she said.

"Plasma. Just, uh, junky ones. From the old base. You remember when Vahlen showed you the notes."

"Okay, so, you found the prototype plasma weapons which had never been produced, you used them against no less than three Avatars, and then they vanished before I woke up."

Did he say three? Oh god, he said three, didn't he. "Uh, yes. Ma'am." He snapped off a drunken salute, in the hopes that somehow that would make what he said look like the truth.

The Commander didn't say anything for a long moment. Then she started to smile, and then she started to laugh, and her cheeks were rosy red from the drinking and she was bending over a little and her laughter filled Bradford's heart up for a good two weeks.

"God, I missed the old Bragford," she said, and clapped him on the shoulder.

And Bradford began to smile too, and said, "Actually, those weren't the only Avatars I fought. Let me talk about the DJ..."


	8. Chapter 8

Bradford found the Commander on a catwalk above the bridge, gripping the railing so hard her knuckles turned white.   
  
"Commander?"   
  
The Commander whirled on him. "What? What happened? Is something happening?"   
  
Bradford raised his hands. "No, no. I was just...looking for you."   
  
The Commander visibly relaxed. Now that Bradford was looking for it, he could see she looked a little wild. Her hair was frazzled, her movements were a little jerky, her uniform was rumpled.   
  
"Commander--"   
  
"Janice, please. I'm...not exactly feeling Commander-y right now."   
  
"Janice, then." The name felt weird on Bradford's tongue. He knew that the soldiers she was dating called her that, and that most of the rest called her Commander Jan, but he couldn't really feel comfortable calling her by it. "Are you alright?"   
  
"Yeah. Yeah, I am."   
  
"It's three in the morning by the ship's clock. You should be asleep."   
  
Janice-- the Commander shook her head. "I was. I had...a dream. Not sleeping anymore."   
  
"Ah."   
  
"I just...so many people are counting on us. On me."   
  
"And they should."   
  
Janice looked away. "Sometimes I'm not sure."   
  
Bradford opened his mouth to say something, but he didn't have any words for her. Just feelings he didn't know how to express, and a lot of trust. The pale blue holosphere made her hands look ghostly frail.    
  
Then Janice clapped him on his shoulder. "I'll try to get some more rest. You should too, dumbass. Your shift ended like an hour ago."   
  
She brushed past him. Words began to bubble up in the bottom of Bradford's throat. He knew that the next time he saw her, she would be the Commander again. The untouchable, perfect Commander.   
  
All he could say was, "Good night, Janice."   
  
"Good night, John."   
  
And she was gone.


	9. Chapter 9

The frantic chatter came over the comms.   
  
"We can't afford to stay any longer!"   
  
"I've got the VIP to the Evac point!"   
  
"Drake! Get your ass in gear, where the hell are you?"   
  
"Interceptors are inbound!"   
  
And above all the chaos, the Commander. Bradford watched as she stood tall over the proceedings.   
  
"Drake isn't here!"   
  
"We need to go get him!"   
  
"Are you insane, Lost?"   
  
"No man left behind!"   
  
The Commander coolly raised a hand to her headset. "Get to the evac point, on the double, soldiers."   
  
A moment of silence cut through the radio chatter.   
  
"Ma'am, with all due respect, we can't just leave Drake behind."   
  
"Focus on the mission."   
  
There was another moment of silence, then a chorus of voices announced they were at the evac point.   
  
Then, as they were loaded into the Skyranger, one final voice came in over the comms.   
  
"I'm sorry, ma'am. I'll do better in the next life, I promise."   
  
Then gunfire, then silence.   
  
Bradford noted, as the bridge quieted out of respect for the fallen soldier, that the Commander's hands were gripping the console so hard the knuckles went white.    
  
The moment broke when one of the people on the bridge let out a low whistle, and then, slowly, everyone began to clap for the Commander.   
  
Bradford was the first to clap, of course. Only the Commander could have pulled off an operation like this. She'd been forced to field a squad of rookies, untested in combat, due to all of the more experienced soldiers having been injured. They'd had to extract a hostile VIP from a particularly dangerous area. They found on top of the normal alien presence one of Vahlen's damnable experiments. And yet they still made it out with only a single casualty and the VIP captured. It was mind-boggling.    
  
"Incredible!" someone yelled. It might have been him. Then again, everyone had taken up their posts to oversee this mission expecting a bloodbath on the other end of the line.   
  
The Commander said nothing as the applause and scattered cheers drew to a close. Then she said, "Thank you all for helping to make this mission a success. Let us ensure that Drake's sacrifice was not in vain." Her voice wavered slightly when she said the name of the fallen soldier, but Bradford didn't think anyone else noticed. He barely had. He might have just imagined it.   
  
The Commander gave a terse, "Good night, everyone," and began to walk off toward her quarters.   
  
And then she stopped, turned, and said, "Officer Bradford, come with me. I'd like to speak to you in private." He hurried after her, wondering what she wanted.   
  
As soon as they were in her office, the Commander slumped down into her seat, her head thunking onto her desk like a paperweight. Bradford, unsure, remained at attention. Only when the Commander glanced his way and saw that he was still standing did she say, "At ease. Have a seat."   
  
He sat down, wondering what was weighing on her so heavily.   
  
"What am I doing, Bradford?"   
  
"I don't know what you mean, Com—”   
  
"Janice."   
  
Bradford blinked. She was asking him to call her Janice again? He swallowed a lump of apprehension.   
  
"I mean that a room of people just applauded me for getting a man killed. That the last words on that man's lips were that he was sorry he'd disappointed me. That his death was treated as an incredible victory."

  
"Com— Janice. With all due respect, it was. For you to come out of that with one casualty—”   
  
"Kevin. His name was Kevin."   
  
Bradford's mouth opened and shut. Then he steeled himself and kept going. "This is war, Comm— Janice. I'm sure you know that sometimes your men and women will die."   
  
"Of course I know that. Do you think I'm so cocky I came back thinking that I could win this war with nobody on this ship dead?"   
  
Bradford smothered the thought that if anyone could do it, she could. That was probably the last thing she needed to hear.   
  
"It's that everyone just praised me anyway. Like getting Kevin killed was admirable somehow. Like the soldiers in his squad won't be drinking the night away to try and forget that I gave the order that killed their friend."   
  
Bradford didn't say anything.   
  
"I am so, so tired, John."   
  
Bradford couldn't say anything. How many of his men had died after the Commander had been captured? How many dead rebels was he drinking for, now?   
  
"I'm tired of hard choices. I'm tired of every minute fearing that the next minute is the one where the aliens catch us. I'm tired of everyone on this ship acting as though I can do no wrong, even as I watch my mistakes compound and spiral."   
  
Bradford didn't know what to do. The Commander was vulnerable. To him. In front of him. She was in pain in front of him.   
  
She trusted him.   
  
She wanted him to call her Janice.   
  
He sat there, with his hands on the armrests, and with shock and horror he saw that she had started to cry. A silent leaking of tears, a quiet shaking.    
  
The Commander was crying. No, the Commander would never cry. She couldn't, because she was right. Everyone out there looked to the Commander to be their hope. No, Janice was the one who cried.   
  
Bradford got up, and softly walked over to her side of the desk, and placed a consoling hand on her shoulder.   
  
Janice stopped crying, eventually. And she wiped her eyes, and told Bradford that she was heading to bed, and that she would see him tomorrow.   
  
And when Bradford lay down in his bed that night, he wondered for a few brief moments if he'd done the right thing, and if the Commander would let him see Janice again.


End file.
